I'm really going crazy here...I know I need to just think it through and decide, but any last minute thoughts would be really appreciated.

Heard back from Chicago today and they aren't giving me any aid, meanwhile Duke went up to 24k/yr. Turned in scholarship appeal to Chicago and I'll be contacting Penn tomorrow, but considering Duke's deposit will need to be mailed tomorrow if I go there, I need to make a decision tonight (even if it's to take Duke out).

- Visited Duke and Penn, liked both. Didn't visit Chi, except for undergrad like 7 yrs ago (at which point, I liked it). Penn appeals to me because of city + proximity to family/friends, Duke appeals to me because of weather + where I live will probably be nicer. - Between savings and help from family, Duke lands me right around or very close to no debt. Penn and Chi put me about 50k and 80k respectively. (I took the numbers they gave and then assumed an increase of 5% each year).- I am not sure where I want to work. Leaning DC, dislike NYC. I also don't have great ties to any major market (NY, DC, west, midwest) unless I marry my friend in CA*.- Clerking looks like it might be interesting, but I want a firm job. At least for a little while. At this point, I don't think I want PI so not really considering LRAP. I'm thinking IP, I'm patent bar eligible, and I have 2+ yrs of WE.

My last poll was largely to Chicago but I'm wondering if the slight increase in money from Duke changes that (also I got a lot of votes but not much discussion). Michigan w/ 45k is still on the table, too, so I stuck it in the poll, but feeling a bit meh about that option.

I think a 50k debt burden will be fairly easy to pay off after a few years at a firm. I think this is a contest between Penn and Chicago. I voted for Penn b/c of the 30k and the family/friends connection. Nevertheless, if I was in your shoes w/o the family/friends variable and got the 30k to Penn, I'd pick Chicago pretty easily. So I guess only you can judge how significant the family/friends factor is. I visited both schools. They both impressed me. Feel free to PM me w/ questions. I'm heading to Chicago in the fall.

I voted duke, mainly because you mentioned clerkships and the no debt.Duke ranks higher than Penn or Chi for both clerkships in general and article iii clerkships as well--LinkRemoved--it ranks 6 overall, and 4 in terms of T14, right after HYS

also, i dont think there is too big a difference between penn and duke, so i'd take duke with more money. finally, if you want dc, i think duke has the upper hand, it has the duke in dc program.

I have no idea why your previous poll was so UChi heavy. The only thing that I could think of was your dislike for NYC.

I'd take Duke here since it's so much cheaper. But if you really don't want to work in NYC then maybe UChi because it gives you a good shot at biglaw in a non-NYC city (Chicago). No other school gives you a good shot at biglaw outside of NYC other than UChi.

My dislike of NYC would obviously take a backseat if the best job offer came from NYC. Just as far as living, there are a lot of places I like better. That said, the smaller difference between Penn/Duke isn't worth it either? I'm looking at that 2010 employment spreadsheet...

Duke is nice. I would go there if you wanted NYC Big law or Southern Midlaw. Otherwise, Chicago will allow you to get where you want to go. Duke will likely get you to NYC, and if you are a cognitive dissonance type, you can always just convince yourself you always wanted NYC. Duke is worth the gamble if you are willing to accept NYC.

Don't believe that it is easier to get A3 clerk ships from Duke. Chicago has fewer people gunning for them, and you will be able to get at least Dist Court with effort. That's right, I'm suggesting that anyone wanting an A3 clerkship from Chicago gets one. If you want a good DC/AC, you will get one with top 30% grades or above median if you want to go firm first.

OP I ended up with similar options (CCN vs. Lower T-14 $$) and realized that with these debt levels NYC BigLaw has to be on the table. Might as well go to the school that gives you the best odds there, and then just gun hard for the truly preferred option. That said Penn seems like a nice middle of the road option here, but I'd take Chicago.

thanks @ TaipeiMort, I will still probably prefer...not-NYC. I'm going to take another look at the big packet Duke gave us with the locations for 2L SAs for 2012.

@Tiago SplitterI remember you from way earlier this cycle, you gave some pretty good advice as far as schools to apply to. Thanks for that and glad to see your cycle worked out well.

Would a bit more $ from Penn change things? I'm probably out of time for negotiations so I'm not counting on anything, but they don't know about my higher offer from Duke nor my acceptance to Chicago. I'm thinking of asking if they'd be willing to make the gap between Duke/Penn smaller (thus making the gap between Penn/Chi larger).

TaipeiMort wrote:Duke is nice. I would go there if you wanted NYC Big law or Southern Midlaw. Otherwise, Chicago will allow you to get where you want to go. Duke will likely get you to NYC, and if you are a cognitive dissonance type, you can always just convince yourself you always wanted NYC. Duke is worth the gamble if you are willing to accept NYC.

Don't believe that it is easier to get A3 clerk ships from Duke. Chicago has fewer people gunning for them, and you will be able to get at least Dist Court with effort. That's right, I'm suggesting that anyone wanting an A3 clerkship from Chicago gets one. If you want a good DC/AC, you will get one with top 30% grades or above median if you want to go firm first.

Not saying that Taipeinort is necessarily wrong, but relevant:

G. T. L. Rev. wrote:

lsatcrazy wrote:At both Columbia and NYU ASWs, faculty were making claims that "If you are geographically open-minded, landing a clerkship is a near-guarantee". Any/how much truth to this sentiment?

"A clerkship," huh? Assuming the most expansive possible interpretation of that term -- which would include state trial courts in Arkansas and traffic court in New Jersey -- then maybe.

If, on the other hand, they meant "a federal Article III clerkship" (i.e., U.S. court of appeals or district court), then the claim is one hundred percent false. Fraudulently so. Tons of people from CCN apply for clerkships every year and strike out. This includes people on Law Review at those schools. CLS & NYU place something like eight to ten percent of their class into Art. III clerkships. Those numbers would go up if every applicant applied broadly and hustled (many do not), but there would still be quite a few strikeout victims.

Applying broadly helps, but it also has its limits. Judges in places like Fargo, ND are usually far more prone to hire top students from local, lower-ranked schools than a random top 1/3 student at CLS with no local ties. This means that the broad swath of "flyover" clerkships are not a reliable fallback for students outside the top third or so at top schools.

TaipeiMort wrote:Duke is nice. I would go there if you wanted NYC Big law or Southern Midlaw. Otherwise, Chicago will allow you to get where you want to go. Duke will likely get you to NYC, and if you are a cognitive dissonance type, you can always just convince yourself you always wanted NYC. Duke is worth the gamble if you are willing to accept NYC.

Don't believe that it is easier to get A3 clerk ships from Duke. Chicago has fewer people gunning for them, and you will be able to get at least Dist Court with effort. That's right, I'm suggesting that anyone wanting an A3 clerkship from Chicago gets one. If you want a good DC/AC, you will get one with top 30% grades or above median if you want to go firm first.

TaipeiMort wrote:Duke is nice. I would go there if you wanted NYC Big law or Southern Midlaw. Otherwise, Chicago will allow you to get where you want to go. Duke will likely get you to NYC, and if you are a cognitive dissonance type, you can always just convince yourself you always wanted NYC. Duke is worth the gamble if you are willing to accept NYC.

Don't believe that it is easier to get A3 clerk ships from Duke. Chicago has fewer people gunning for them, and you will be able to get at least Dist Court with effort. That's right, I'm suggesting that anyone wanting an A3 clerkship from Chicago gets one. If you want a good DC/AC, you will get one with top 30% grades or above median if you want to go firm first.

That's complete fabrication. If that's true, why do 11% of people doing clerkships at U Chi do state clerkships?

Also, U Chicago students want to clerk like fuck. Chicago is a major destination for clerkship aspirants.

How did it happen that making the tired claim that this ghetto shithole is UNDERrated became the signature conversation piece for people who desperately want to be thought smart; really, really smart. smart people love "rigor" and Chicago is full of it; it must be, what with its hair-splitting number grades, punishingly low enforced mean, and oppressive course load. Chicago boosterism usually comes in the form of a comparison with the appallingly UNrigorous Stanford or Yale -- gradeless, abundantly pass-fail, unserious; students who do nothing and know nothing. Chicago: graded, competitive, serious... That it's really just a ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects is a fact not emphasized. I have seen a homely Chicago girl, deep into her second year, still spontaneously weeping upon Proustian recollections of the stiff NO Harvard sent her, in brisk three-week turnaround time from the point her doomed application was deemed complete. Happy December, chickiepoo. Then the Yale axe fell, as it does. Welcome to the New Year, dipshit. January passed; February crawled by with those joyless acceptances that only accentuated the horror of Plan B: Georgetown, which is a "Law Center," a failed euphemism if ever there was one. Next: woeful Cornell. Oh, what a very bad school. And -- what do we have here?!? -- a Boston University full-ride. Ummmm, no. On second thought in stead of BU I'd prefer the f free roasted dogshit mignon with a pus reduction sauce and a heaping blob of earwax garnish. Thank you no. I am woe. Add to that the fact that the imbecile whoalways posts about how Sean Hannity is a "serious thinker" just got into Harvard. Time for you to start some damage-control posting here, on the PR board, pretending to seriously consider this BU affront. You wave the flag of thrift and test out a quaintly anachronistic abhorrence of debt. Substantively, you add in some tommyrot about how BU's "really strong in ...'international law,' whatever the fuck that is. BU? Yeah, right. But you need something that gives the illusion that Georgetown, if it comes to that, isn't the three years incarcerated in a smegma chamber that it is. So good, so fine you'll drop the cash dollars despite that lovely gift from BU. You're forming a cover story; something to puff the very real and very nauseating prospect of joining 600 other defeated mediocrities at ... fuck, no ... Georgetown. And you thought going to college at Penn was bad. . Still, there are two more to hear from. Two more law schools ...There's that late April Stanford rejection (inconsiderate bastards) which at least affords you ample time to manufacture the next layer in the cover story: e.g., a strict policy against California, a suburban aversion, a preference for bigness, all of which eliminate Stanford from the sweepstakes. Be sure, too, to ridicule their tepid 25-75 LSAT %ile, too. Kill it dead, if you must. Maybe you thrust out of your frozen horror by sending off one of those strategic "withdrawal" letters, the way all those clowns do when Harvard puts them on hold ... ".you cant't fire me ... i quit! " Adios, Stanford. Suck my cunt, you no-SCOTUS-clerking/dike-dean-TTT. ... die, die, you gravy-sucking pig. .... and now, then, there is just one. Chicago. The Law School. Chicago does do that pathetic yield-maximizing stall, so February passes, March crawls. They haven't the nuts to try the ricockulous move Stanford does. So they write. Ever rigorous, The Law School requests the pleasure of your company. Not so fast . No decision has been made. They want to inspect you in person. The "evaluative interview. Looking for people skills. And evident thirst for knowledge. The life of the law is the law itself. It seems you've fucked up; quite possible3 when the went "behind the numbers." Maybe those two essay paragraphs about why the 171, exactly where you topped out in Kaplan, is a truer measure than the 164. maybe it was two paragraphs too many. You weren't an auto-admit. So off to the "evaluative interview," and you give them not much to evaluate. You stay on message, though: owing to its RIGOR, Chicage is now, and ever was, your FIRST CHOICE. Tell your audience what it wants to hear. Then they decide, engaging the only evaluation that matters in this gig. Looks like they can break even with your sorry ass. Median-wise, your 171 nullifies the 159 URM from Howard they took yesterday. They'll swallow your 3.46; sometimes that's the price of a yield-lock, and you're that. (No one's swallowing the Howard guy, if you catch my racy double entendre.) These admissions guys talk, as you suspected, and you wisely decide against telling them it had come down to Chicago or Harvard for you; first versus second choice; no choice at all. Never get caught lying. Bad idea, even worse than telling that stupid girl from Emory you were "a Kennedy." These things get found out. Like they say, no sense lying about your cock size. Turns out you didn't need to fake a bidding war. The usual stampede of all Chicago's best admitees are going to Y and H and S without so much as the courtesy of telling C to go pound sand. Why tell them what they already know? They need to fill place #143 of their famously teeny-weenie class. The assumed occupant got unheld at Harvard this morning; never so relieved, he had the audacity to ask Chicago for his deposit back. They don't need these headaches. You're in. They write, very pleased to offer admission; then a recital of just how "keen" the competition was for the few precious "seats" in the class of 2006; and, finally, a paragraph celebrating the legal profession with a toploftiness and richly felt purpose so precisely at variance with reality that you are unsettled by the suspicion that you might be the target of a satire so subtly corrosive that you will never connect it with the despair that will progress, exponentially; beginning as a persistent annoyance progressing into a pervasive physical and mental crapulence and ending in the crippling burden as lumber and writhe and tumble toward the epiphany. What epiphany is that? That this "career" of yours --BIGLAW! -- has somewhat less to recommend it than residence in the "shoe" at Pelican Bay. For now, though, the seed of tragic hopelessness finds expression in the "Law Discussion Area." You post -- IN AT CHICAGO -- and, without overtly lying, you manufacture the entirely erroneous impression that you "chose" Chicago, being also the originator of the CHICAGO v. HARVARD and YALE v. CHICAGO threads, under various of your insipid monikers, all selected from either Pulp Fiction or Friends. Be careful not to ass fuck your credibility, though. The purported Yale turn-down is a tough one to pull off. The "New Haven's-an-armpit" trope just doesn't pass the ha-ha test. It's too puny a reason to toss away a lifetime of being supposed a genius ... fuck it: always good to give your fabrications a little populist tint, not to mention a dollop of truth. Join the commiseration thread of Yale rejects; pretend to be sad for that Nuisance turd; be one of the masses for once. Getting rejected isn't the same thing as not getting in, You merely did not get in. You claim to have been wait-listed; and, with admirable maturity, you hold out no hope. Remember, too, this lie must be built on several fronts. Lard up the Harvard thread with grave concern about big classes, low morale, faculty acrimony, and speculation about a precipitous US News ranking drop. Throughout April, you go political, fulminating about Tribe and Dershowitz and how Duncan Kennedy drives a far-too-expensive car. to be a genuine socialist. Chicago's "conservative climate" is just a better fit for you; marginal cost curves figure in your every analytical moment; you read Posner opinions on the crapper; Coase is as important as Socrates. There is that little stinging glitch, though. Somehow Stanford neglected to process that request to quash your application, which is not favorably acted upon and this is memoriaized in a letter that suggests the Stanford Admissions Office ignores their LaserWriter Pro's TONER LOW warning. On May 7th they regret to inform and wish you well at any of the scores of other law schools that, they assure you "offer excellent programs of legal instruction." (Which, you have no doubt, they do. What they don't offer, is really the only important thing Stanford does offer: the opportunity to sit for three years with your thumb up your ass, comatose, and still get the job you'll have to bust nuts to get coming from whichever craphole you end up at.) It's sealed. An ugly, styleless maroon CHICAGO LAW, Champion sweatshirt has arrived, per your online order. You wear it, eliciting congratulations from the babe you want to rail. She's so happy for you, and you're so wrapped up in the fantasy of creaming on her tits you nearly miss perky aside that her boyfriend remains in the throes of elation from his admission to Yale, back in January. Throughout the summer, you bookmark links that embody the wisdom US News lacks. Your are heading off, soon, to your own first choice, which also places first in a ranking produced by the rigorous methodology conceived by a statistician from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That Harvard tied for #14 undermines your confidence in the ranking diminishes the likelihood it will supplant US News' preeminence. So you go. Your Hyde Park apartment is actually rather nice. Your housemate went to Harvard College. One night, instead of jacking off before sleep, you register as an active component of your self-conception the notion that, transitively, your housemate's undergraduate credential nullifies the Harvard rejection that left you lusterless and unlaid at your senior prom, -- and has persisted as a gnawing ache, going on five years. You are now on equal footing with a Harvard graduate. Should your law school prowess exceed his -- say a 75 in Torts to his 74 -- you will once and for all flick away the scab of that Harvard wound. First cut is the deepest. As it turns out, your housemate is an engaging, witty fellow. He's porking the big bosomed lady with the Dutch accent. Wow! He offers to you, his new chum, the story of his own execution -- by lethal injection -- as expected, he painlessly relates, by the HLS admission staff. You pretend to explore what might have caused things to go awry, flatulating the usual fatuousness about Harvard being excessively "numbers driven," the "arbitrariness" of it all, dangling the threat of going on at some length, when he offers up the only information you genuinely care to know about him: : 178/3.34 ..Of course some one will inevitably have the 6th percentile college GPA in every HLS class; probably not a white guy from Greenwich, though. Friendship is built through reciprocity. So you tell your own story. You attempt to weave compassion into the telling of your story, being careful not to appear boastful about not just possessing, but discarding something he does not possess. HLS. Dreamy, So, your story: the grueling back-and-forth ... one day it's Chicago, the next Harvard; the hardest decision you've ever made; that feeling of immense responsibility to yourself; discovering and summoning the emotional maturity to pierce the specious veil that is prestige. With the bearing of a battle weary soldier you tell what it is to do something rarely done -- circumnavigate the Earth, dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop, turn down Harvard Law School . You picked Chicago. You chose, you adorable little existentialist. You are not exposed, chiefly because this a shared lie, Community glue. (Postscript: Throughout the 1Lyear you and your housemate discover much commonality, He, too, prefers the Stones to the Beatles. You both smoke pot. neither is circumcised. You've each fucked 5 girls; gotten head from several others. Each of you applies to transfer. He gets into HLS. He turns down Harvard Law School. Of course no two people are exactly alike. Your desire to transfer wanes around the time Stanford and Yale's decisions on your transfer applications reach you by mail. You begin the CHIGAGO 1L TAKING QUESTIONS thread. One of your alter ego monikers asks simply: how do you like Chicago. You love it. You wouldn't go anywhere else and, you note, there were other places you could have gone. Same for your housemate. He transfers to Yale.)

thanks for all the clarifications. I did mention clerking but it's not something I'm aiming as must-have...just a "seems interesting, will look into it more and perhaps go for a clerkship if all the stars align", etc.

TaipeiMort wrote:Duke is nice. I would go there if you wanted NYC Big law or Southern Midlaw. Otherwise, Chicago will allow you to get where you want to go. Duke will likely get you to NYC, and if you are a cognitive dissonance type, you can always just convince yourself you always wanted NYC. Duke is worth the gamble if you are willing to accept NYC.

Don't believe that it is easier to get A3 clerk ships from Duke. Chicago has fewer people gunning for them, and you will be able to get at least Dist Court with effort. That's right, I'm suggesting that anyone wanting an A3 clerkship from Chicago gets one. If you want a good DC/AC, you will get one with top 30% grades or above median if you want to go firm first.

That's complete fabrication. If that's true, why do 11% of people doing clerkships at U Chi do state clerkships?

Also, U Chicago students want to clerk like fuck. Chicago is a major destination for clerkship aspirants.

Because if you want a dc from Chicago and have crap grades, you'll have to mail and network your way to some pretty unexciting places, like Montana, Chattanooga, and Maine. People don't want to do this to themselves who don't have big law/ want to practice in a region for a reason. For example, if you are PDing. Or Dating in a particular location, a DC in Denver won't help you, but the craziness that is state court will.

Chicago>>Penn>>>Duke. Plus, if you don't want NYC biglaw you can always work in Chicago...or really any other metro area. Chicago is a top 5 school...I doubt anyone will turn you down BECAUSE you went to Chicago. That's stupid

msblaw89 wrote:Chicago>>Penn>>>Duke. Plus, if you don't want NYC biglaw you can always work in Chicago...or really any other metro area. Chicago is a top 5 school...I doubt anyone will turn you down BECAUSE you went to Chicago. That's stupid

I agree completely, I guess I'm just trying to figure out if the increased benefit is worth a 90k difference (that's with interest) over Duke as bk1 said. I'm trying not to count it too much but it's also hard to ignore the supposed benefit IP gives you as far as finding a job (might change my mind, market might change, blah blah blah), given what I've read on here and talking to students and wondering how much difference the school name can make for me.

msblaw89 wrote:Chicago>>Penn>>>Duke. Plus, if you don't want NYC biglaw you can always work in Chicago...or really any other metro area. Chicago is a top 5 school...I doubt anyone will turn you down BECAUSE you went to Chicago. That's stupid

I agree completely, I guess I'm just trying to figure out if the increased benefit is worth a 90k difference (that's with interest) over Duke as bk1 said. I'm trying not to count it too much but it's also hard to ignore the supposed benefit IP gives you as far as finding a job (might change my mind, market might change, blah blah blah), given what I've read on here and talking to students and wondering how much difference the school name can make for me.

Chicago and Penn is more negligible, but Chicago is still supreme. And IMO there is no way to rationalize Duke to Chicago...unless you has a SO living in NC and you wanted to be in NC for the rest of your life. I would argue that Chicago would still give you just as many if not more job opportunities in the South as Duke. All three are great schools! But we are not comparing apples to apples here...even with the added cost

msblaw89 wrote:Chicago>>Penn>>>Duke. Plus, if you don't want NYC biglaw you can always work in Chicago...or really any other metro area. Chicago is a top 5 school...I doubt anyone will turn you down BECAUSE you went to Chicago. That's stupid

I agree completely, I guess I'm just trying to figure out if the increased benefit is worth a 90k difference (that's with interest) over Duke as bk1 said. I'm trying not to count it too much but it's also hard to ignore the supposed benefit IP gives you as far as finding a job (might change my mind, market might change, blah blah blah), given what I've read on here and talking to students and wondering how much difference the school name can make for me.

Read this then take the Duke money unless Penn will make up some more of the difference.

This is tough, but I think I'd take Duke. If you goals were better defined, I could see choosing Chicago, but as open-ended as you are, I think it's smarter to take the minimal debt for only somewhat lower job prospects. Taking the debt at UChi forces you into biglaw, whereas minimal debt at Duke frees you up for other opportunities.